Ich erhielt vor Tagen diesen hübschen Cartoon von Kim Warp aus dem New Yorker zugeschickt: Da sitzt Kapitän Ahab gemütlich sein Pfeifchen rauchend unter seiner Jagdbeute und erzählt Mrs Ahab die Geschichte vom weißen Wal. Cartoons zu Moby-Dick sind ja jetzt die große Sache, die Popular Culture macht sich über Melvilles Meisterwerk her, ➱Emoji Dick gibt es auch schon.
Als ich Joachim Kruse 1976 half, die ➱Ausstellung und den Katalog zu Illustrationen zu Melvilles Moby-Dick zu machen, legte ich ihm einen Cartoon aus dem Playboy (auf dem eine übergewichtige nackte Prostituierte zu einem Seemann sagt: And stop calling me Moby Dick!) auf den Schreibtisch. Der Museumsdirektor druckte den Cartoon ohne mit der Wimper zu zucken ab. Ein kleiner Gag der Ausstellung war eine ganze Museumswand voller Bilder von Kapitän Ahab, die der Photograph des Museums aus den Vorlagen der Buchillustrationen vergrößert hatte. Das erschlug den Betrachter optisch beinahe. Aber das war nichts im Vergleich zu den Bildern zu Moby-Dick, die heute das Internet füllen.
An dem Idyll in der Kapitänsstube in Nantucket in dem Cartoon oben irritiert uns die Anwesenheit von Mrs Ahab. Hatte Ahab überhaupt eine Frau? Sie tritt im Roman nicht in Erscheinung. Lediglich Captain Peleg erzählt unserem Ishmael: And once for all,
let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, it 's better
to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad
one. So good-bye to thee and wrong not Captain
Ahab, because he happens to have a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife not three voyages wedded
a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by that sweet
girl that old man has a child: hold ye then there can be
any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad;
stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!'
As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what
had been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab,
filled me with a certain wild vagueness of painfulness
concerning him. And somehow, at the time, I felt a
sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don't know
what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange awe of him; but that sort of awe,
which I cannot at all describe, was not exactly awe; I
do not know what it was. But I felt it; and it did not
disincline me toward him; though I felt impatience
at what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as
he was known to me then. However, my thoughts were
at length carried in other directions, so that for the present
dark Ahab slipped my mind.
Natürlich habe ich heute nicht nur einen Cartoon, ich habe auch ein Gedicht von dem Amerikaner Dan Beachy-Quick, das Moby Dick heißt.
Natürlich habe ich heute nicht nur einen Cartoon, ich habe auch ein Gedicht von dem Amerikaner Dan Beachy-Quick, das Moby Dick heißt.
No reverie begs “light” in the blind eye.
Reverie says: dig this depth-of-blank
Deeper. Dig deeper
With the Whale below the white-capped waves—
A twitch of his tail, a twitch of his white tail
Birthed from ocean-bed the wave
That broke calm water into each cracked plank
Of the harpooner’s boat, made that man sway,
And cast him on the spear his arm meant to cast
At you. Beneath the sun’s evil weight
Men burn nightwards but never darken
Past night. There’s always the moon’s hook
On still water to deny them.
But Whale, you dive down
Until the ocean’s ground begs you solid, “Stop.”
Whale, you do not stop.
You beat your head against the jagged rocks.
Blind in depths so dark light itself is blind,
You knock your head against the rocks to see
And scratch the god-itch from your thoughts.
Flame is jealous of flame, once lit, it ever
Reaches higher. You wait, match-tip, White Whale.
I see how you wait in silence for silence
To say: write it in, tell me who I am now.
Ich wünsche meinen Lesern ein frohes Osterfest. Besonders denen in Weil der Stadt, Hamburg, Rieseby, Winsen, Moses Lake, Berlin und Vejle.
Reverie says: dig this depth-of-blank
Deeper. Dig deeper
With the Whale below the white-capped waves—
A twitch of his tail, a twitch of his white tail
Birthed from ocean-bed the wave
That broke calm water into each cracked plank
Of the harpooner’s boat, made that man sway,
And cast him on the spear his arm meant to cast
At you. Beneath the sun’s evil weight
Men burn nightwards but never darken
Past night. There’s always the moon’s hook
On still water to deny them.
But Whale, you dive down
Until the ocean’s ground begs you solid, “Stop.”
Whale, you do not stop.
You beat your head against the jagged rocks.
Blind in depths so dark light itself is blind,
You knock your head against the rocks to see
And scratch the god-itch from your thoughts.
Flame is jealous of flame, once lit, it ever
Reaches higher. You wait, match-tip, White Whale.
I see how you wait in silence for silence
To say: write it in, tell me who I am now.
Ich wünsche meinen Lesern ein frohes Osterfest. Besonders denen in Weil der Stadt, Hamburg, Rieseby, Winsen, Moses Lake, Berlin und Vejle.
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